What she sees at the revolution

Peggy Noonan is a writer and columnist for the WSJ. Part of her reputation stems from her writing speeches for Reagan and the elder Bush, and for coming up with memorable phrases. Some of these phrases apparently did not work out well for whom she coined them. Read my lips.

“The larger point is that this is something we are seeing all over, the top detaching itself from the bottom, feeling little loyalty to it or affiliation with it. It is a theme I see working its way throughout the West’s power centers. At its heart it is not only a detachment from, but a lack of interest in, the lives of your countrymen, of those who are not at the table, and who understand that they’ve been abandoned by their leaders’ selfishness and mad virtue-signalling.”

Noonan, presumably to impress on us her status among the well-connected, opens her piece recounting a meeting with “an acquaintance of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor and the conversation quickly turned, as conversations about Ms. Merkel now always do, to her decisions on immigration.” Noonan then recounts Merkel’s announcement in late 2014 that refugees from Syria, Iraq and elsewhere were welcome in Germany, the following influx (net) of more than a million in 2015, the resultant public discussions in Germany about this fact, and the claim that, coming “from such a sturdy, grounded character as Ms. Merkel the decision was puzzling – uncharacteristically romantic about people, how they live their lives, and history itself …”. We learn that the acquaintance of Merkel attributes her puzzling decision to her upbringing as the daughter of a Lutheran minister in East Germany, and as yet another attempt of providing “a kind of counter-statement, in the 21st century, to Germany’s great sin of the 20th.”

We learn that, while this was as good an explanation as Noonan heard, there was a fundamental problem with the decision:

“Ms. Merkel had put the entire burden of a huge cultural change not on herself and those like her but on regular people who live closer to the edge, who do not have the resources to meet the burden, who have no particular protection or money or connections. Ms. Merkel, her cabinet and government, the media and cultural apparatus that lauded her decision were not in the least affected by it and likely never would be.”

“Nothing in their lives will get worse. The challenge of integrating different cultures, negotiating daily tensions, dealing with crime and extremism and fearfulness on the street—that was put on those with comparatively little, whom I’ve called the unprotected. They were left to struggle, not gradually and over the years but suddenly and in an air of ongoing crisis that shows no signs of ending—because nobody cares about them enough to stop it.”

Noonan goes on to invoke the Cologne transgressions at last new year’s eve celebrations and Merkel’s adjustment to the considerable political backlash that her policies have brought about (the strong emergence of the AfD and the growing support of other populists such as Seehofer, the head of her own party’s Bavarian branch) and her pleading with her own populace to deal with both the positive and the negative aspects of globalization. Quoting a fellow journalist, Noonan argues: “’This was the chancellor’s … way of acknowledging that various newcomers to the national household had begun to attack her voters at an alarming rate.’ Soon after her remarks, more horrific crimes followed, including in Munich (nine killed in a McDonald’s) Reutlingen (a knife attack) and Ansbach (a suicide bomber).”

Now, it is rather rich that as prominent a megaphone for the global elites as Noonan virtue-signals her compassion for the disenfranchised masses that allegedly have fallen victim to the NIMBY syndrome. For all we know, Noonan got paid royally for her piece and was writing it in a brownstone home in an affluent residential New York City neighborhood.

While it is way too early to assess all the benefits and costs of the developments in Germany since late 2014, it seems self-evident that Noonan is mostly uninformed about the current state of affairs there. That, unfortunately, seems to be the modus operandi of post-truth journalists like her who are no better than the illiterati and inumerati populating social media.

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8 Responses to "What she sees at the revolution"

Peggy Noonan is a joke. The day before the 2012 Presidential election she predicted in the WSJ that Romney would win because “something was in the air”. But the polls showed that Obama would win easily (which he did). Noonan said the polls were wrong. Why were they wrong? Just because.

Noonan does not do facts. She pulls her columns out of her arse. Why some people regard her as a reputable pundit is one of life’s mysteries.

I didn’t realise we had so much to be grateful for….
Do you see the cultural enrichment brought by the introduction of child brides on the left or the right side of the cost benefit ledger?
Just curious…

Ah, I see. I thought you were referring to the recent laws enacted in Turkey pertaining to child brides. The German law, as it also says in the article, does not allow for it: “The legal age of marriage in Germany is 16, but parent consent is required as well as permission from a court.” I am sure that the courts in Germany will make sure that these rules get enforced. Hopefully, fast.

Let’s hope so but I have very low confidence
Also I challenge the assumption that murder rates are going down so refugee policy must be cause…
Like saying Brexit was justified by the huge number of medals in rio – or maybe it was